Radio ReviewIt wasn't the Wall Street Crash of 1929, but our national broadcaster wasn't going to let that get in the way of a good story. On Tuesday, Morning Ireland(RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) blanket bombed us with a barrage of percentages.
If they didn't hit us square between the eyes the first time, they would make sure they rammed us on the keister on the fifth or sixth. The Nikkei was down 6 per cent, Hong Kong was down 8 per cent, and so on, and Monday saw the worst losses since 9/11. This points to the fact that this time there was no 9/11 catastrophe, as Aine Lawlor pointed out, but 9/11 still evokes the drama.
Morning Irelandpromised they were actually going to talk to China. (How can you talk to a country?) Richard Downes got foreign editor Margaret Ward on the phone. "Margaret, tell us what's been happening in Beijing?" She replied that "Beijing doesn't have a stock exchange". Moving swiftly along. Ward said China was far from recession, and announced that she had "just got an invitation from the State Council to a briefing on Thursday morning" - which beats sticking the invite prominently on your fridge and throwing a dinner party. European editor Sean Whelan told Lawlor that EU finance ministers were calling for calm. They obviously haven't seen Airplane!That just makes people panic, unbuckle their seat belts and call their brokers.
Lawlor said the €240 billion losses - paper losses, I might add - on European markets on Monday were due to "fears" of a US recession. She asked NUIG economist Alan Ahern, "Is there any hope now . . . " - and she finished the question (but I wish she hadn't) - " . . . that Europe and Asia will sidestep the recession that everyone agrees is going on in America?"
Whatever happened to "fear" of a US recession? The train may or may not have left the station, but everyone does not necessarily agree that it's already going on.
Alan Ahern was on a roll, churning out the old chestnut "when the US sneezes the rest of the world catches the flu". The RTÉ newsroom sneezed instead and used it in bulletins. This wasn't a quote from Jean-Claude Trichet or Ben Bernanke or George Soros or even Alan Greenspan, who has a book to flog, it was from an NUIG economist. Ahern said the market feared "if the US goes down it will bring the rest of us with it". Start paddling, people.
The best Morning Irelandnewsflash had yet to come: "The Iseq has just fallen 1.4 per cent in the first minute of trading." 1.4 per cent? By God, they were going to channel the spirit of 1929 if it killed them. "People are scratching their heads as to where all this disaster has come from," Lawlor said. (Disaster?) "What can ordinary consumers do?" Get down on our knees and pray? Ahern said we should tighten our belts: "People should watch what's going on and play it safe over the next few months." That's it. I'm ordering half-pints from now on.
I understand that economics is the new sex, and "Blue Monday" was titillating financial pornography, but at this orgy all the Pollyannas were chained up gimp-like in the Doom Closet. If I hear one more economist howl with delight as he gives himself a good spanking because he predicted the housing downturn and a reversal of fortune on the stock market . . . These economists are not psychic superbrains, they are stating the obvious: we have always lived in a world of bad-hair days and economic cycles.
Ruairi Quinn on Saturday View(RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday) said George W Bush and his advisers were like a bunch of "fiscal alcoholics", citing Bush's proposed $150 billion shot in the backside for the US economy and the last seven years. Only, last week, it was the US Federal Reserve, with its surprise 75 basis point rate cut, which choked on the pretzel, while the ECB maintained its poise, refusing to bring forward its next meeting, like an unflinching European monarch.
Conor Lenihan had the brass neck to take this opportunity to advocate wage moderation. Quinn said it was "ludicrous" to talk about this when CEOs here are paid 10 times the average industrial wage, not to mention Cabinet pay rises. "Well, that particular pay increase has been postponed, as you know," Lenihan replied, a little too loftily. Postponed? How selfless. Quinn wasn't finished yet. Eight years ago we had a highly competitive economy, he said, "but the Galway Tent shifted all that activity and investment into the construction sector." Moderate that! Bertie Ahern, too, was all over the bulletins: "We are watching what's happening around the world and what's happening in Europe and looking at our own situation." That was real tradesman speak: tacitly reassuring, but vague and about as tangible as candyfloss.
There was calm in the media storm. On Morning Edition(NPR.org, Wednesday) Adam Davidson said the market slide may not necessarily presage a US recession: "What they've lost in the last few days or weeks is nowhere near what they've gained in the last few years. It's probably best not to pay too much attention to these short-term fluctuations." Sound advice, especially as stocks surged later in the week, but I suggest whistling a ditty - perhaps not Woody Guthrie - and cutting out all this white noise first.